Episode 602 - The Man in the Basement (aka #becauseIloveyou)
Woke up this morning and opened Tumblr.
First reaction.
Then...
Now I’m just at...
I know what you’re all thinking. Bloody sadist. How can you be so happy when the last scene of last night’s episode was possibly the most heartbreaking in Homeland’s history?
Answer: Because she loves him.
And we can see it. Now more than ever before. There’s no Jonas sex in between where she’s chatting some bs about going to a cabin. There’s no Saul on the sidelines, waiting for his answers. This is just the two of them.
We’ve even got the NYT on our side with this one...
“If there ever was a time for an “I love you” on “Homeland,” it was tonight.“You saved me.”“Yes.”“Why?”“Why? … Why?”
Thanks Judith Warner. I love you too. Obvs, more on this later.
So let’s begin...
I’d like to talk about this...thanks to wthomeland for the gif.
Not only do we have this gorgeous scene to come... they’re just spoiling us now.... but it’s the last shot in the credits. Homeland underlining their relationship/closeness/intimacy is absolutely 100% central to this season and to Carrie’s development. The running narrative through the credits is always about Carrie. ‘I missed something once...’ ‘Who’s after me?’ etc etc. Now it’s Quinn, saying ‘You saved me. Why?’ Can I get an OTP?
That’s not to mention that the whole shot looks like a darker version of the Titanic poster with Quinn/Carrie posed as Jack and Rose.
Just me? Okay, moving on...
Quinn is listening to some random anti-Communist rant on the radio that seemed like it was preaching the end of times. I can only assume that was what was behind Quinn’s random quest for canned food....
Little Frannie Mathison (bless her, what a sweetheart) is listening in, stating, ‘There’s a man in the basement.’ I actually thought it was kind of sweet that Carrie told Frannie that they had Quinn staying with them. And a lovely reminder from Carrie to all the audience that the two of them had met before, and that she liked him...ahhh 412. Those were the days.
‘Frannie took a shine to you.’ Oh that episode. THAT scene. Sigh.
Anyway, Carrie drops off Frannie with some friend and then goes to try and give Quinn his meds. I thought it was quite interesting to see that the door was locked. Presumably it can be locked from both sides? Quinn couldn’t get through last time because she didn’t want him up there (for obvious reasons from his antics the previous day) and now she can’t get back down? They will create these obstacles to their relationship moving forward.
She tries to get in to help.
And Quinn throws the mug.
Thanks Quinn. Real helpful. So Carrie asks Max to keep watch, or as Quinn later states, to ‘babysit’ him.
Freaking love Max, by the way. So glad to see him back.
I thought it was interesting that Max was brought into this episode because for me, it highlighted a couple of things.
1) How lonely Carrie really is. There aren’t that many people she can call on in case of emergency anymore. Saul, let’s not go there. Maggie... god knows where she is, probs still in Washington. Quinn... that completes our circle of friends.
2) How insightful Max is. Max knew Quinn before, which you sort of forget because their little tag team was so long ago. And I thought this scene was really touching.
Max says ‘He’s got this strange thing about you which isn’t helping.’
Carrie gets upset and says desperately, ‘I’m trying!’
It was a really weird but touching scene. It’s hard to read. I couldn’t tell whether he was just telling her the depth of Quinn’s depression, in case she didn’t already know. Or whether he was perhaps saying that she needed to do more to try and help him.
What is this thing that Quinn’s got with Carrie?
The orderlies at the hospital mentioned that he gets agitated when she’s around. At the beginning of this episode, he just rejects her help and throws a mug at her.
I still obviously stand by the fact that he’s so proud that he doesn’t want her to see him like this but I also think he just genuinely doesn’t understand why she cares so much about him and why she’s helping him. He genuinely thinks he’s worthless. Now more so than ever before. Even before trashcan land in 505 - or was it 506? I forget because I try to block out Season Five wherever possible.
I also wonder, but I hope I’m wrong, it’s just a thought so don’t pounce on it. Perhaps Quinn, even in his current state, senses some guilt within Carrie and wonders why. Given the last scene and it’s poignancy, this isn’t a big thing, but it could come up. Who knows?
So her care frustrates him, even angers him. But then Max, bless him, asks him outright as to why he’s being such a dick to her? And he can’t really answer. He’s just angry at the world.
I also thought it was really sweet that every time the phone rang at work and it was Max, Carrie is asking after Quinn. So beautiful.
Yes, you’re getting Jeremy again.
Another thing I thought was quite interesting in this episode, which does play into my analysis of the final scene between Carrie and Quinn, is the conversation between Carrie and Saul.
Saul outright asks Carrie if she’s been working with Pres-Elect Keane. Which she has, so he was on the money there. But it was his... threat, that kind of disgusted me. When he says that it wouldn’t ‘play right’ if it was uncovered that she had been working with Keane. I thought this was way out of line and sort of...inhuman... even for Saul. But Carrie’s repulsed reaction to it shows show much she’s changed from this.
You see, Saul is such a company man now that the sanctity of human life seems to mean nothing to him. Just the fact that he came all the way down to Carrie’s place of work to effectively say, ‘I’ve sniffed you out. Don’t do it again,’ in a semi-threatening sort of way, just shows how flippant he is about everything, including people’s lives and livelihood. This is what the CIA appears to do to people, including Saul, including Quinn. And Carrie wants out. Or at least a changed paradigm...
Furthermore, is anyone else pissed that Saul hasn’t asked how Quinn is? He must know that Carrie is taking care of him, he’s in the CIA, for god’s sake.
Anyway, let’s come to the crux of it.... the scene. So Max is gone, and Carrie tentatively goes down to see Quinn. I thought the fact that he asked how her day was, was really sweet. He really carefully says the words, so as not to get them wrong.
She answers as Carrie would to old Quinn. That made me smile.
And then he asks what happened to him? This bit of the scene made me think that memory loss has been a thing. She goes back to two separate points in time before landing on the story that Quinn wants her to tell.
‘What happened to me...before this?’
I thought it was really heartbreaking how he gestures towards his body.
Carrie is incredulous that he doesn’t know what’s happened to him.
We are also quite surprised. We’ve watched that video as many times as Carrie has. If not more. Sara @hellyeahomeland said it best when she highlighted that there’s so much about this situation that we know, and Quinn doesn’t. We feel like we shouldn’t know if Quinn doesn’t. It feels intrusive and wrong.
Quinn tells us that he hadn’t wanted to watch it, until now.
This is heartbreaking and a huge step forward for Quinn. And very telling that he’s ready to take this step, but only if Carrie is with him. He doesn’t say this, but I would wager this is what he means. He’s finally got to a place where he is more settled (he looks more settled) and this is because of her. It took Max to call him on it but hey, he got there. He is now realising that he can rely on her, he can lean on her a little and it’s okay for him to do that. He doesn’t need to be so proud.
So we get ready to watch it again. I also loved Carrie’s moment of hesitancy and then he touches her, gently, to tell her it’s okay to play it. To tell her that he’s okay. That he’s ready.
This moment in itself is huge. Quinn finally confronts what has happened to him. He watches it and sees what everyone else has seen. His very public capture and torture at the hands of terrorists. The whole world has seen him throw up, wet himself and convulse as a result of the sarin.
Carrie tells him she ‘must have watched it a hundred times trying to find you.’
Carrie’s words here are so gentle, but she’s trying to tell him how much she deeply deeply cares about him. She also makes this whole thing about them and their relationship. I don’t mean romantic relationship (as obviously they weren’t involved at the time) but it’s all about her, trying to get to him.
‘Those tiles. They are what led me to you.’
Her phrasing here. Me to you. Underlying sentiment, ‘Please believe I was doing everything that I possibly could to get to you.’
Furthermore, Carrie shares something that we actually didn’t know. Quinn flatlined in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. He was dead for three whole minutes. She chokes as though these were the longest minutes of her life. Which they obviously were.
‘You saved me. Why?’
Cue Tracey choking a sob over her brew.
‘Why?’
As I mentioned before, there are a few layers to this question from Quinn’s side... let’s unpack them.
1) Quinn doesn’t think his life is worth saving. He hasn’t cared much about his life since he got back from Syria. It all ended.... partly because he thought Carrie was rejecting him and partly because he had far too many intimacy issues to confront a possible relationship with her. So he ran away.
But especially now. He is brain damaged, paralysed down one side and heavily medicated. A shadow of his former self.
2) Quinn doesn’t understand why Carrie cares so much about him. What I would really like to know is how much Quinn remembers.
Does he remember 412?
This may seem like a daft question, but given, as I say, Carrie recalls two explanations from the recent past before landing on what he wants to talk about, I think it needs asking.
Given the way he looks at her here...
I’m going for yes, he does remember. But a girl’s gotta ask.
In which case, how can he not know the answer before her response? Yes, two, three years have passed, but is he so far gone that he doesn’t understand why Carrie could possibly think to save his life?
Carrie is so mortified that he even asks, she says ‘Why’ twice!
I am sobbing at this point, FYI.
I feel like part of this answer, but not the juicy bit, which I’ll come onto.. is that she’s so horrified about his lack of care for his own life. This plays into what I brought up in the scene with Saul. She’s mortified that this is what the CIA does to people. Saving someone’s life is a no brainer. Especially someone you care about. Why is he even asking the question?
And then there’s the crux of it.
Why?
Because I love you.
How can you not know that?
Because you saved my life so many times and I never thanked you.
Because you call me on my bullshit, even when I don’t want you to
Because you came to see me in the hospital.
Because you protected my identity in Berlin, risking your own life to do so.
Because you told me how important my child was when I didn’t even know.
Because you made me believe that a life outside the CIA was possible.
Because you were my friend when I had none.
Because you believed me when no-one else did.
Because you said I was your light.
Because you loved me.
The letter hangs so heavy over this scene, I feel like it should be engraved on the wallpaper. But she can’t tell him that she knows that. And I don’t think he’s ready to hear ‘Because I love you.’ But she does do this.
She touches his heart. And that tells us everything we need to know.
Including Quinn, who appears to be fighting back the tears... it’s dawning on him that things have definitely changed in his relationship with Carrie. He doesn’t know the extent of it yet. But things have changed... they are deeper... and I think he might just be understanding how Carrie feels about him.
He’s starting to love again.. to feel feelings again.. meaning is coming back into his life. It’s so damn beautiful I could start crying all over again. This is a big deal for the Quinn of S5 and of S6.
And here’s the thing. I know I said in my review last week that I thought Carrie was confused about how she felt about Quinn. I don’t think she is now. The relationship is still very, very complicated, as I’ll discuss in a minute. But I think the fact that Quinn asked her the question, directly, carefully, honestly, made her confront a lot of feelings outright. I feel like everything crystallises for her in this scene, which is why she cries so deeply. Not that she suddenly realises how she feels about him right NOW, but nobody has asked her that before. No-one has asked her why she saved him, why she’s taking care of him.
And she can’t even answer it because it’s like she’s being stabbed in the heart by someone she loves. How can you even ask me that? How can you not know?
And to all those who say this scene is about guilt...I think we’d be silly to think she doesn’t feel guilty/complicit for what’s happened to Quinn. That is one reason she’s so upset, but it’s very small in the scope of the scene.
Because the scene isn’t about waking him up. What Carrie actually discusses is finding him, him flatlining in the ambulance and being gone for three whole minutes. What she is bringing up is this....
How she felt when she thought she’d lost him. How she doesn’t want to be without him. This is what she’s talking about. Saul doesn’t even come into it. The terrorists’ target has nothing to do with this. Waking him up has nothing to do with this.
But here’s the thing, folks. The further down this road they go, the more questions Quinn may ask. The more questions he asks, the more Carrie tells him. The more she tells him, the more he finds out. And pretty much Carrie’s worst nightmare right now (or later in the Season) is Quinn finding out that she and Saul woke him up and were pretty much responsible for his hemorrhage.
Because that means keeping Quinn alive was about the mission. It wasn’t about what he means to her. And Quinn consequently might think that the relationship they’ve built from 602 onwards was about guilt, and not about love.
When I think we can say, for definite now, that it is about love.
And the only thing that could rescue this situation, should it present itself?
The letter. Carrie tells Quinn she read the letter.
I’m not sure that this is where it will go, we’re only at 602... but it’s possible.
But right now, I think we should lay back and look at this...
And look forward to some seriously cute Quinn and Frannie bonding. It’s gonna be a good season for us folks.
Over and out.
